Whoa!!! Engineering University at 12?
When you find a boy with a backpack regularly roaming around the halls of Cornell University College of Engineering in Ithaca, New York, most likely he is not lost. Because he is an undergraduate student there.
Jeremy Schuler was already admitted as an engineering student at Cornell at the age of 12, which makes him the youngest student ever to enroll in the Ivy League institution. This is no wonder since the boy, who is now 13, is a child prodigy.
When he was barely two, Schuler is able to read English and Korean. Upon reaching five, he read Journey Through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics which was his benchmark in learning calculus a year later.
Because he was way ahead of his time, Schuler had to be homeschooled. He was able to graduate with his high school diploma from Texas Tech University Independent School District (TTUISD), a flexible online education program that allows K-12 students to earn credits at their own pace.
But we all know that homeschooled children are not given the luxury to socialize with others while learning, so the parents, who are both aerospace engineers by the way, became worried.
Not until the couple brought their child into a math camp and a group called Math Circle. There, he was able to find new friends right away.
“We were concerned about him socializing with other kids,” his mother, Harrey Schuler, said. “At the playground he was freaked out by other kids running around screaming. But when we took him to Math Circle and math camp, he was very social. He needed someone with similar interests.”
So it was not really a problem then about Jeremy being put into a university for formal education. But even when his test scores in maths and science were already enough to be in Cornell at only 10 years old, Jeremy had to wait for his parents to move to upstate New York so that they could look after him during his studies.
As of writing, Jeremy also finished his first year at Cornell Engineering. But of course it was hard for him during his first days being a college student.
“I was nervous at first, but I’m a lot more excited than nervous now,” he revealed when he started to be an engineering student.
“As Mommy said, all the kids in math camp were older than me, so I’m used to having older friends. As long as they like math.”
When it comes to the classes, Jeremy said that the classes were easy at the time. He added, “The classes are kind of easy so far, but I know they’ll be harder pretty soon.”
Jeremy wants to pursue a career in academia. Lance Collins, Cornell’s Dean of Engineering, believes in him and his ability to do greater things than he has imagined.
“It’s risky to extrapolate, but if you look at his trajectory and he stays on course, one day he’ll solve some problem we haven’t even conceived of. That’s pretty exciting,” Collins said.
Source: Independent UK
